Ratings: Zucker-Era CNN Collapses to New Lows

22 Jan 2014

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the most under-covered media story in the country right now is the collapse of CNN. Other than Tapper o’clock, the network is an absolute mess. As I write this, Brooke Baldwin is devoting a full segment to a game called “Candy Crush.” This was followed by yet another segment on — wait for it — “Blackfish!” Who is this network programming for? The latest ratings show, pretty much not anyone.

In the all-important 25-54 age demo, CNN has sunk to its lowest point since Jeff Zucker took over a little over a year ago. Between January 13 and 19, The Least Watched Name In News averaged only 74,000 demo viewers in total day. This is the network’s worst showing since May of 2012.

During this same week, Fox News nearly tripled CNN in demo viewers with 212,000 and MSNBC more than doubled CNN with 148,000.

[Y]ear-over-year, CNN was down 33% in total day from the comparable week a year before (January 14 – 20, 2013) and down 39% in primetime. Fox News actually saw a 3% bump from the 212,000 it had in adults 25-54 a year ago, while MSNBC dipped 5% from the 155,000.

I monitor somewhere around 14 hours of CNN a day and can tell you that the quality of the network has cratered over the last year. Local crime stories, whales, fluff, dorky videos, weather, a ton of shallow stories that play up identity politics, and a number of unappealing anchors (Carol Costello, Piers Morgan, Ashleigh Banfield) and tired ones (Wolf Blitzer, Gloria Borger).

The network’s left-wing bias is as glaring as it’s ever been. This week Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell’s problems got all kinds of play — Wendy Davis’s bio-gate and the March for Life not so much.

Whales, weather, Wolf, and covering up for Wendy are what’s sinking CNN.